


they will consecrate your vertebrae

by Serindrana



Series: i've seen the flash of teeth [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Cannibalism, Death, Deathfic, Decay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 06:22:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Death has nearly stopped his thoughts.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Nearly.</i>
</p><p>Corvo has died, but the Outsider isn't through with him yet. Post-game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they will consecrate your vertebrae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lamprey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lamprey/gifts).



They take him from the crematorium before a single flame singes his skin. They pull him from his kindling box once his funeral has ended but before the morning has become, and they carry him out through alleys and sewers until they reach a chamber deep below the surface. He feels the motion distantly, as if in a dream. Death has nearly stopped his thoughts.

Nearly.

They hum somewhere over his skin, anchored to his fingernails. He can see blurred shadows. He can hear muffled sounds. Most of his attention, however, is focused on his lack of heartbeat. There is no blood flowing in his ears; it has clotted in his veins and settled in the chambers of his heart.

He doesn't remember his funeral; he barely remembers his death. Memory doesn't work quite the same when the brain stops its endless humming. All the actions around him seem to run together. He feels his blood sink to his back, pulled inexorably towards the ground. He feels his stomach churn and roil. He feels his skin bloat and split.

None of this causes pain. The pain stopped when he choked on a lucky assassin's blade, eyes going dim as he stared at the last corpse at his feet.

Pain is a symptom of living, and one he remembers almost fondly now. Pain meant he could still get up and go to Emily. Pain meant he had a chance. He remembers Coldridge and lives in the agony of the red-hot metal searing his skin, of the cracking of his bones, of the purgatives forced down his throat.

He comes back to find them flaying the skin from his bones, slice by slice, chunk by chunk. They take blood clots in their hands and press them to shards of whalebone, or to their lips. They mutter and they pray. Their god does not listen.

Their god watches Corvo, and Corvo watches him.

"Did you ever think you would die, Corvo?" their god says, as conversationally as he has ever spoken. "Did it ever seem real to you?"

Corvo watches as they pull apart what's left of the muscles around his knee, excise the patella, set it aside to be boiled. "What are they doing?" he asks.

"I didn't want them to burn you," the Outsider says. "So I had my worshippers take you somewhere safe. They will repurpose you."

"I am not made of whale," Corvo says, and for a moment he remembers a bitter taste in his mouth. Frustration. Anger. Disgust. It fades back into confusion.

"No, but there is power in a human's bones, too. Especially when they've been soaking in my power for two decades."

The Outsider touches his hand; he cannot feel it. His nails have begun to split away from the skin, and he wonders what will happen when the flesh beneath has rotted. The mark is no longer living on his flesh; death has rendered his skin mottled and dark.

For a moment, it flares. The Outsider's worshippers fall to their knees. One has blood around his lips.

"Some of them will consume the softer parts of you, even now. They hope it will bring them closer to me. Others will carefully curate your bones, slice your femurs into rounds, consecrate your vertebrae. They will put my mark into the bone with inexpert hands. They will put their blood and tears and seed into them. They will try to preserve the same of yours. They will place them on my altars and they will pray, and I will ignore them."

The Outsider smiles. Corvo tastes sadness, fear, disgust, and then it evaporates again.

"I wish we'd had more time together, Corvo," the Outsider murmurs, bending over him so that his lips come close to Corvo's teeth that sag in their sockets. "But this will be a new era for us. Your whispers will live on in your bones, and I will guide new curiosities to them. They will carry you as you have carried the pieces of so many others. You will be discarded and lost a thousand times. You will reverberate through the ages. Your name will disappear. Your bones will remain."

Corvo remembers what it was like to scream and thrash and fight. His body heaves upon the table and a strangled sound comes from its throat. It is not his voice. Somebody stabs a blade between his body's ribs. Another takes his shoulders and bends his body back until they can hack out the putrefied heart in his chest.

He has forgotten how to speak. The Outsider strokes a hand along his melting cheek.

"Emily will live to be an old woman, Corvo. She will have two children. They will tear her house apart. You could never have stopped that, in any of the futures I once saw for you. Geoff Curnow will die in three days, by suicide. Callista Curnow will mourn him, but she will not die until after Emily has burned; she has too much life in her to balance out the death, and it emerges in an unending endurance. She has wanted to die for years. She will not.

"The plague will come back. It will follow Morley's ships. They will win. Dunwall will burn. But Emily will sit on her throne and order them to kneel and because she will wear a piece of your jaw above her breast, not knowing that it's yours, they will kneel.

"There is a forgotten colony on Pandyssia that will build ships and sink Serkonos into the ocean. You never knew they were a threat.

"You have given me great joy, Corvo." The Outsider beds down with him on his filthy slab of rock and slime. "And so, though your potentials are at an end, I've given you a gift.

"You will never truly die."

His lips curl and brush what was once an ear.

"And isn't that fascinating?"


End file.
